Alliance wraps up Mt. Rainier spec for easy CD-writing

Four industry leaders have finished their work on the Mount Rainier specification, a project to make writing, deleting and rewriting data to a CD as simple as accessing a floppy disk.

Compaq Computer, Sony, Microsoft and Philips Electronics came together in October last year to develop the specification for native support of CD-RW (compact disc-rewritable) drives in PC operating systems. An official announcement is expected later this week.

The first drives supporting Mount Rainier will be on the market mid-2001. Microsoft, however, won't include Mount Rainier in the first release -- expected in the second half of this year -- of Windows XP, its new operating system for consumers and business users.

"Mount Rainier won't make it into the first version of Windows XP. We expect it to be offered shortly after the release in software updates," said Hans Driessen, spokesman for Philips Optical Storage.

Adding native support for the drives takes away the need to install separate software, like hardware drivers and CD-burning programs, to make a CD writer work, a major obstacle for corporate adoption of CD writing, according to Philips.

"The burden of multi-vendor support will be taken away, as a single vendor will now also support the CD-RW drives. Also, staff will not need to be instructed on how to use special CD writing software," said Driessen.

In addition to the four core companies, close to forty others joined the group and are supporting quick adoption of Mount Rainier. Amongst the backers are Acer, Dell Computer, Matsushita Electric, and Plextor.

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